Complete Works. Henry Cabot Lodge
of acknowledgment for his great courtesy and kindness. 172
On March 16th a British division of five boats and 105 men, commanded by Lieutenant James Polkinghorne, set out to attack the privateer schooner Dolphin of 12 guns and 70 men, and the letters-of-marque, Racer, Arab, and Lynx, each of six guns and 30 men. Lieutenant Polkinghorne, after pulling 15 miles, found the four schooners all prepared to receive him, but in spite of his great inferiority in force he dashed gallantly at them. The Arab and Lynx surrendered at once; the Racer was carried after a sharp struggle in which Lieutenant Polkinghorne was wounded, and her guns turned on the Dolphin. Most of the latter's crew jumped overboard; a few rallied round their captain, but they were at once scattered as the British seamen came aboard. The assailants had 13, and the privateersmen 16 men killed and wounded in the fight. It was certainly one of the most brilliant and daring cutting-out expeditions that took place during the war, and the victors well deserved their success. The privateersmen (according to the statement of the Dolphin's master, in "Niles' Register") were panic-struck, and acted in any thing but a brave manner. All irregular fighting-men do their work by fits and starts. No regular cruisers could behave better than did the privateers Lottery, Chasseur, and General Armstrong; none would behave as badly as the Dolphin, Lynx, and Arab. The same thing appears on shore. Jackson's irregulars at New Orleans did as well, or almost as well, as Scott's troops at Lundy's Lane; but Scott's troops would never have suffered from such a panic as overcame the militia at Bladensburg.
On April 9th the schooner Norwich, of 14 guns and 61 men, Sailing-master James Monk, captured the British privateer Caledonia, of 10 guns and 41 men, after a short action in which the privateer lost 7 men.
On April 30th Commodore Rodgers, in the President. 44, accompanied by Captain Smith in the Congress, 38, sailed on his third cruise. 173 On May 2d he fell in with and chased the British sloop Curlew, 18, Captain Michael Head, but the latter escaped by knocking away the wedges of her masts and using other means to increase her rate of sailing. On the 8th, in latitude 39° 30' N., long. 60° W., the Congress parted company, and sailed off toward the southeast, making four prizes, of no great value, in the North Atlantic; 174 when about in long. 35 ° W. she steered south, passing to the south of the line. But she never saw a man-of-war, and during the latter part of her cruise not a sail of any kind; and after cruising nearly eight months returned to Portsmouth Harbor on Dec. 14th, having captured but four merchant-men. Being unfit to cruise longer, owing to her decayed condition, she was disarmed and laid up; nor was she sent to sea again during the war. 175
Meanwhile Rodgers cruised along the eastern edge of the Grand Bank until he reached latitude 48°, without meeting any thing, then stood to the southeast, and cruised off the Azores till June 6th. Then he crowded sail to the northeast after a Jamaica fleet of which he had received news, but which he failed to overtake, and on June 13th, in lat. 46°, long. 28°, he gave up the chase and shaped his course toward the North Sea, still without any good luck befalling him. On June 27th he put into North Bergen in the Shetlands for water, and thence passed the Orkneys and stretched toward the North Cape, hoping to intercept the Archangel fleet. On July 19th, when off the North Cape, in lat. 71° 52' N., long. 20° 18' E., he fell in with two sail of the enemy, who made chase; after four days' pursuit the commodore ran his opponents out of sight. According to his letter the two sail were a line-of-battle ship and a frigate; according to James they were the 12-pounder frigate Alexandria, Captain Cathcart, and Spitfire, 16, Captain Ellis. James quotes from the logs of the two British ships, and it would seem that he is correct, as it would not be possible for him to falsify the logs so utterly. In case he is true, it was certainly carrying caution to an excessive degree for the commodore to retreat before getting some idea of what his antagonists really were. His mistaking them for so much heavier ships was a precisely similar error to that made by Sir George Collier and Lord Stuart at a later date about the Cyane and Levant. James wishes to prove that each party perceived the force of the other, and draws a contrast between the "gallantry of one party and pusillanimity of the other." This is nonsense, and, as in similar cases, James overreaches himself by proving too much. If he had made an 18-pounder frigate like the Congress flee from another 18-pounder, his narrative would be within the bounds of possibility and would need serious examination. But the little 12-pounder Alexandria, and the ship-sloop with her 18-pound carronades, would not have stood the ghost of a chance in the contest. Any man who would have been afraid of them would also have been afraid of the Little Belt, the sloop Rodgers captured before the war. As for Captains Cathcart and Ellis, had they known the force of the President, and chased her with a view of attacking her, their conduct would have only been explicable on the ground that they were afflicted with emotional insanity.
The President now steered southward and got into the mouth of the Irish Channel; on August 2d she shifted her berth and almost circled Ireland; then steered across to Newfoundland, and worked south along the coast. On Sept. 23d, a little south of Nantucket, she decoyed under her guns and captured the British schooner Highflyer, 6, Lieut. William Hutchinson, and 45 men; and went into Newport on the 27th of the same month, having made some 12 prizes.
On May 24th Commodore Decatur in the United States, which had sent ashore six carronades, and now mounted but 48 guns, accompanied by Captain Jones in the Macedonian, 38, and Captain Biddle in the Wasp, 20, left New York, passing through Hell Gate, as there was a large blockading force off the Hook. Opposite Hunter's Point the main-mast of the States was struck by lightning, which cut off the broad pendant, shot down the hatchway into the doctor's cabin, put out his candle, ripped up the bed, and entering between the skin and ceiling of the ship tore off two or three sheets of copper near the waterline, and disappeared without leaving a trace! The Macedonian, which was close behind, hove all aback, in expectation of seeing the States blown up.
At the end of the sound Commodore Decatur anchored to watch for a chance of getting out. Early on June 1st he started; but in a couple of hours met the British Captain R. D. Oliver's squadron, consisting of a 74, a razee, and a frigate. These chased him back, and all his three ships ran into New London. Here, in the mud of the Thames river, the two frigates remained blockaded till the close of the war; but the little sloop slipped out later, to the enemy's cost.
We left the Chesapeake, 38, being fitted out at Boston by Captain James Lawrence, late of the Hornet. Most of her crew, as already stated, their time being up, left, dissatisfied with the ship's ill luck, and angry at not having received their due share of prize-money. It was very hard to get sailors, most of the men preferring to ship in some of the numerous privateers where the discipline was less strict and the chance of prize-money much greater. In consequence of this an unusually large number of foreigners had to be taken, including about forty British and a number of Portuguese. The latter were peculiarly troublesome; one of their number, a boatswain's mate, finally almost brought about a mutiny among the crew which was only pacified by giving the men prize-checks. A few of the Constitution's old crew came aboard, and these, together with some of the men who had been on the Chesapeake during her former voyage, made an excellent nucleus. Such men needed very little training at either guns or sails; but the new hands were unpractised, and came on board so late that the last draft that arrived still had their hammocks and bags lying in the boats stowed over the booms when the ship was captured. The officers were largely new to the ship, though the first lieutenant, Mr. A. Ludlow, had been the third in her former cruise; the third and fourth lieutenants were not regularly commissioned as such, but were only midshipmen acting for the first time in higher positions. Captain Lawrence himself was of course new to all, both officers and crew. 176 In other words, the Chesapeake possessed good material, but in an exceedingly unseasoned state.
Meanwhile the British frigate Shannon, 38, Captain Philip Bowes Vere Broke, was cruising off the mouth of the harbor. To give some idea of the reason why she proved herself so much more formidable than her British sister frigates it may be well to quote, slightly condensing, from James:
"There was another point in which the generality of British crews, as compared with any one American crew, were miserably deficient; that is, skill in the art of gunnery. While the American seamen were constantly firing at marks, the British seamen, except in particular